Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 280X

Radeon HD 6870
Memory: 1024Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 21 Oct 2010
Radeon HD 6870
Radeon R9 280X
Memory: 3072Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 8 Oct 2013
Radeon R9 280X

Summary

Synthetic performance index

  • Radeon HD 6870
    100%
  • Radeon R9 280X
    241%

Relative performance

Gaming performance index

  • Radeon HD 6870
    100%
  • Radeon R9 280X
    266%

Relative performance

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 6870

99 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon R9 280X .
Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon R9 280X

166% higher gaming performance.
This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Radeon R9 280X

HWBench recommends Radeon R9 280X

The Radeon R9 280X is the better performing card based on the game benchmark suite used (5 combinations of games and resolutions).


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon HD 6870Radeon R9 280X
GPU NameBarts (Barts XT)vsTahiti (Tahiti XTL)
Fab Process40 nmvs28 nm
Die Size255 mm²vs352 mm²
Transistors1,700 millionvs4,313 million
Shaders1120vs2048
Compute Units14vs32
Core clock900 MHzvs850 MHz
ROPs32vs32
TMUs56vs128

Memory Configuration

Radeon HD 6870Radeon R9 280X
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width256 bitvs384 bit
Memory Speed1050 MHz
4200 MHz effective
vs1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective
Memory Size1024 Mbvs3072 Mb

Additional details

Radeon HD 6870Radeon R9 280X
TDP151 wattsvs250 watts
Release Date21 Oct 2010vs8 Oct 2013

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon HD 6870
    28.80 GP/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    27.20 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon HD 6870
    50.40 GT/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    109.00 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon HD 6870
    134.00 GB/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    288.00 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon HD 6870
    2016.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon R9 280X
    3482.00 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better

Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 11

  • Radeon HD 6870
    4540
  • Radeon R9 280X
    10960

Points (higher is better)

Game benchmarks

Battlefield 4

DX11, Ultra Quality,2x MSAA,16x AF, HBAO

  • Radeon HD 6870
    23
  • Radeon R9 280X
    72

FPS (higher is better)

Bioshock Infinite

DX11, Ultra Quality,DDOD, FX AA

  • Radeon HD 6870
    29
  • Radeon R9 280X
    69

FPS (higher is better)

Crysis 3

DX11,Very High Quality, FXAA

  • Radeon HD 6870
    17
  • Radeon R9 280X
    42

FPS (higher is better)

Medal Of Honor Warfighter

DX11, Ultra Quality, 4xMSAA

  • Radeon HD 6870
    25
  • Radeon R9 280X
    67

FPS (higher is better)

Bioshock Infinite

DX11, Ultra, DDOD, FXAA

  • Radeon HD 6870
    18
  • Radeon R9 280X
    48

FPS (higher is better)